


you were cool

by hot_leaf_juice



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Gen, Introspection, Kataang - Freeform, Sukka, maiko
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:01:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23895745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hot_leaf_juice/pseuds/hot_leaf_juice
Summary: “I guess I just didn’t feel like that with Mai.” said Zuko, “She didn’t have anything do with any of them.”He knew that Sokka and Suki were looking at him without understanding. Mai had spent months working with Azula. Up until that day, she was loyal to the fire nation. Her dad was the governor of what used to be Omashu. How could she not be part of it?
Relationships: Mai/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 548





	you were cool

“And then I  _ almost  _ fell off the edge of the gondola, _ almost  _ fell hundreds of feet to my certain death into a giant lake of boiling water, BUT I DIDN’T.” 

Teo had to duck as Sokka swayed his sword for dramatic effect while he recounted the events of the prison bust. An hour ago the Western Air Temple refugees had been gathered around the evening fire, beginning to worry about the length of Sokka and Zuko’s fishing trip, when a fire nation warship crept up near their landing. Teo, Haku, and The Duke sped to the higher levels of the temple to get a better shot at the invader while Aang, Katara, and Toph readied for what they anticipated would turn into another hasty escape, until they heard familiar voice cracks from an attached loudspeaker shout “GUYS IT’S SOKKA AND ZUKO AND S- NO ONE ELSE JUST US AND WE ARE NOT FIRE NATION SO DON’T WORRY.” 

“Jeez just alert the whole fire nation why don’t you?” mumbled Toph, the team lowering defenses and the Earth kingdom boys coming back down. 

Katara had been ecstatic to see Hakoda again, hugging her dad tight and breaking off from the group to help him heal from any sustained burns. Aang and Toph greeting Suki with relief with Toph being uncharacteristically awkward ( _ look, Sokka said he was jumping in the water and I can’t  _ **_see_ ** _ in the water so how was I supposed to know you were the one who came to save me?”).  _ The Earth kingdom boys recognized Chit Sang’s position of being the new outsider accompanying the tight-knit group of heroes and candidly introduced themselves before showing him around. 

The only one who remained aloof -- or tried to remain aloof-- was Zuko. The trip to the Boiling Rock had been uncomfortable enough as he wasn’t exactly sure how to strike up a casual conversation with a guy who he had first introduced himself to by roundhouse kicking him off of his ship while invading his village. The trip back had been easier as the warship required a lot more firepower than the balloon and Zuko had had to continue bending for most of the trip back while Sokka reunited with his father and girlfriend. 

After learning the ancient secrets of firebending and finally feeling the element flow freely through him for the first time in his life, Zuko didn’t feel as though firebending was something he had to  _ work  _ for anymore. Now he could feel heat, sun, and energy all around him. He could breathe heat, not for survival or warmth, but because it was natural. Zuko wasn’t thinking about firebending in terms of preparing to fight Azula or impressing his father or capturing the Avatar, he was simply  _ feeling  _ the fact of being a firebender, living in energy. 

That being said, powering an entire airship for hours straight was an exhausting task, even with Chit Sang’s help, and after landing, Zuko had practically teleported to his mat in the corner of the sleeping room. 

With the exception of Hakoda and Katara, the group had gathered around the fire to help the newly freed prisoners acclimate and listened to Sokka’s recount of their escape. 

“Sorry, sorry,” Sokka apologized to Teo as Suki, who was occupying the space of Sokka’s non-sword wielding arm, made the executive decision to grab the hilt of her boyfriend’s weapon and put it out of the way of his adrenaline-fueled dramatizing. 

“So anyway, we’re standing on the gondola and they’re cutting the line EVEN THOUGH the warden was inside. Princess Fire Blast and her most annoying contortionist retreat to a gondola going the other direction and at this point, you’re thinking there’s NO WAY they could have made it out of this situation. I mean at this point we’re in the middle of the line and that thing  _ definitely  _ was not going to float, much less in a boiling lake, so how-” 

“JUST GET TO THE POINT ALREADY!” screamed Toph, who’d been on edge since the news that the meat Sokka and Zuko had promised days ago was nonexistent and, much like the days when Sokka had trained with Piandao, she hadn’t had anyone to properly bounce playful insults off of in days. 

“You know you could pretend to appreciate my storytelling abilities,” Sokka pouted, “so we think we’re done for and then the gondola starts moving again and we see Zuko’s girlfriend had beat all the guards at the deck and stopped them from cutting the lever. After that, we stole Her Royal Firepants’ airship and claimed another Team Avatar victory, the end.” 

Sokka ended his story with a satisfied smirk, hoping the general awesomeness of their narrow escape would elicit something other than a mixture of moderately impressed smiles from Teo, Haru, and The Duke and confusion from Aang and Toph. 

“Wait, who fought off the guards at the end there?” asked Aang. 

“Alright, buddy, you are going to love this,” said Sokka with a realized glee at the fact that he finally had a jucy detail about Zuko he could reveal, “do you remember that girl with the pigtails and the knives who like, never smiled. The one with Azula but not the one who does the weird blocky-punch stuff.” He clarified to Toph, “the one who was ‘guarding’ the Earth king’s bear in Ba Sing Se.” 

“Wait…” 

“SHE’S ZUKO’S EX-GIRLFRIEND!” 

“Wait, Sparky’s what now?” asked Toph, who was pretty sure she wasn’t going deaf. 

“I didn’t know she was his ex.” said Suki, “Though it makes sense given she’s the walking embodiment of Dark Spirits Day.”

“Come on guys, Zuko’s part of our team now and I don’t think we should make fun of her like that.” Aang said diplomatically, before letting his actual curiosity get the better of him, “But when did that happen? Wasn’t he, you know, on a ship for the past year?” He whispered, knowing that Zuko was sleeping on the other side of the room. 

“Ask him yourself,” Toph stated, before disrupting the firebender’s much-needed sleep by tilting the ground up from under him. He woke up falling on his face before storming over.

“What the hell? What was that for?” Zuko asked bitingly, regretting his decision to move from sleeping in the private back room of the temple to the communal space. 

“Twinkletoes wanted to ask you a question,” said Toph without remorse, letting Aang bear the burden of Zuko’s sleep-deprived glare. 

“Nope, I didn’t have anything to say so you should probably just go back to-” 

“He wants to know about your girlfriend, Sparky.” Toph cut off. Zuko gave a side-eye to Sokka before sighing and answering the airbender’s question. 

“She’s actually my ex-girlfriend, technically,” muttered Zuko awkwardly. “We dated late spring, early summer.” With the unsaid ‘we dated after I attacked you guys at Ba Sing Se and went back to the fire nation, which I then committed treason against.’ 

“So what you just started dating your sister’s friend as soon as you got home?” jeered Suki. “Do fire nation girls dream of the day their village-burning prince will come and sweep them off their feet?” She said with a tone of sarcasm that made it apparent to everyone exactly why she was dating Sokka. She could forgive Zuko for his past actions and saw that he was working to help their cause and could definitely feel grateful for his help breaking her and Hakoda out of the Boiling Rock, but she wasn’t going to let him off that easy. Even though Sokka had come a long way with his trust of Zuko, he continued to delight in Zuko as a target of comedy. 

“She’s not like that. We’ve known each other since we were kids.” Zuko bit back. 

“Ah, so we see the prolonged effect of exposure to fire nation royalty,” she continued and moved to Sokka’s ear but spoke in a fake-whisper, “we better watch ourselves, who knows how long we have until our face muscles are set to ‘funeral mode’.” This comment brought back Zuko’s initial annoyance. 

“You know, last time I checked we wouldn’t have escaped that prison if Mai hadn’t come through.” 

“Last time I checked I wouldn’t have been in prison if she hadn’t helped your sister attack my warriors,” Suki replied with significantly less sarcasm than before. 

Zuko quickly shifted from defensive to one of his ‘oh shit, forgot about that thing I or someone I’m related to did that massively screwed these people over’ modes of awkward. “Oh, yeah, sorry about that too.” He shifted uncomfortably in his spot. “She’s not usually into fire nation-related causes if that makes a difference, she joined my sister because they’re friends.” 

“I bet your sister loved her helping you guys escape.” said Toph, meeting what would have been silence if not for the crackling of the fire. 

Zuko knew the risk Mai had taken in helping them escape. He knew that she, proud and self-preserving as she was, had not only defied Azula, but her uncle, her family, and her country. He also knew that even as he knew Mai’s skills as a fighter and had no doubt she could protect herself under extreme circumstances, that as she had helped him escape the Boiling Rock, she had trapped herself to Azula’s wrath. The fire reflected his emotion, burning higher and brighter until he caught himself. 

“You know it’s still weird to me,” said Sokka, “I feel like dating her would be like dating a snakebat that throws knives at you.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” snapped Zuko.

“Nothing, nothing, just… you know,” Sokka treaded lightly as he realized just how close he was sitting to Zuko’s element, “she’s kind of intense.” 

“Your girlfriend walked  _ on top  _ of a top security fire nation prison riot and singlehandedly took the warden as a hostage today and you’re calling  _ my _ girlfriend intense?” asked Zuko with overwhelming bewilderment at the double standard. 

“Aw, do I intimidate you Zuko?” Suki playfully mocked, leading way for Sokka to give a smirk so palpable Toph could feel it without using earthbending. Zuko rolled his eyes, but hoped his comment would help him into the warrior’s good (or at least, better) graces. 

“I still don’t totally get it man,” said Sokka, “even when you were hunting us you weren’t exactly, you know…” He poorly imitated Azula shooting fire, “on great terms? I mean why would you date someone so… Azula-friendly?” 

Zuko still had his eyes fixed on the fire, absentmindedly bending twists and turns into the pit, but letting a small chuckle out, as “friendly” would probably be one of the last words to describe Mai. He knew there were layers of unspoken questions being directed at him. The group could understand why he had allied himself with Azula, she was his sister and she had promised him honor and victory. They could understand why he had gone back to his father, as they couldn’t imagine having to face the choice of cutting off their parent for being evil incarnate. But to  _ choose  _ someone who had spent months throwing knives and arrows at them, tracking them on giant reptiles, and assisting in the overthrow of Ba Sing Se seemingly just for the hell of it, for the choice of  _ Mai  _ he needed to explain himself. 

“It’s like I said, we’ve known each other since we were kids.” He shrugged, hoping that would be enough, but the revelation that ‘oh that guy with the giant scar who spent an entire winter trying to kidnap a 12-year-old for reasons they still don’t understand and the gothic knife thrower that spent the spring chasing them apparently dated in the time neither of them were busy terrorizing the group’ wasn’t something he could shrug off. While Teo, Haru, and The Duke had shifted from this topic unfamiliar to them to moving away from the fire to ask Chit Sang about his time in fire nation prisons. 

“I bet it was an arranged thing, am I right Sparky?” asked Toph, blunt as always, “I bet her dad’s some noble and you too were set up before you could walk.” 

“No.” Zuko replied quickly. “It wasn’t like that, she was…” 

He didn’t know how to explain their relationship. He didn’t  _ want to.  _ That was the thing about Mai, she was the one thing about the fire nation he actually missed and it was because she was separate from all the things that were wrong with his home. She wasn’t there for the firebending lessons he couldn’t master when Azula had months before. She wasn’t there for the afternoons he spent with Ursa, which were too brief and ended too badly. She didn’t have anything to do with Ozai’s constant berating and criticism. She didn’t expect anything of him as a prince or a firebender or a son. When he thought back to the times he was forced to play with Azula and her friends as kids, he couldn’t remember Mai as  _ Azula’s friend,  _ he could only remember her as the girl he pushed into a fountain when the apple on her head was on fire. 

Mai wasn’t the fire nation. She was the girl who he had trusted to throw darts at him when they were 11 and blushed when she unpinned him from a tree. She was the girl, when Lu Ten had passed away, had let him cry next to her without expecting him to carry the death of his cousin with no emotion. She was the girl, when his mother had disappeared and he had become crowned prince overnight without any idea what do do, had held his hand as a silent way of letting him know that he could be scared around her. She was the first person he had shown his swordwork and smiled at his secret passion. She was his first kissed when they were 12, painfully awkward and exhilarating as it was. And she was the person he, at 13, newly scarred and banished, he knew he could miss the most. 

The group was waiting for an answer Zuko knew he owed them to prove his loyalty. “When I betrayed Uncle in Ba Sing Se,” he started, with the underlying ‘when I betrayed all of  _ you,  _ “I got to go home for the first time in a while. I was different. Even though my actions were supposed to restore my honor, I was lost and I was out of place.” Zuko paused, hoping he had set a firm foundation of remorse. “I thought my destiny was with the fire nation, with my father’s approval and love.” 

There was an unsaid, but maybe not implied, ‘ _ love that doesn’t actually exist.”  _

“I had been deemed a traitor and an outcast from my home for so long and being back didn’t feel like I was finally rid of those labels, it just felt like I was one wrong step from being those things again at any moment.” 

Aang understood this perhaps more than Zuko realized. There was a reason he wasn’t supposed to be told about his Avatar status until he was 16 and being trust into a future in turmoil with his people gone and the fate of the world on his shoulders, he understood the feeling. Traveling through the Earth kingdom and listening to cries and pleas for the Avatar’s help, it took a long time before he accepted that this person was him and he was not in fact a child in the Avatar’s body. To have the destiny to save the world at such a young age, Aang sometimes hoped a cosmic mistake had been made and someone would come and fix it. 

“I guess I just didn’t feel like that with Mai.” said Zuko, “She didn’t have anything do with any of them.” 

He knew that Sokka and Suki were looking at him without understanding. Mai had spent months working with Azula. Up until that day, she was loyal to the fire nation. Her dad was the governor of what used to be Omashu. How could she not be part of  _ it?  _

Aang understood. In the long journies and battles with firebenders, bounty hunters, pirates, Dai Li, and his own Avatar state, he had Katara. She was with him through everything but she was  _ safety.  _ She was  _ love.  _ He had those moments with Katara before he knew he had been in the ice for 100 years and before he knew about the war. She had seen him as Aang first and the Avatar second, maybe because of those moments where that’s all he was to her. And to have that person that made captital-d Destiny mute and made him felt like a normal kid, she meant everything. 

Toph brushed off all the ‘emotional crap’ the others expressed freely, but she did understand. The time she spent as the Blind Bandit, the adrenaline she was addicted to in those months that countered the nothingness that was her home life, was a lifeline she didn’t realize she had been holding onto. She hid behind snark and grit, but deep down she knew that she had found a home in these people. Once earthbending had been what kept her alive when she felt she was drowning in the persona her parents had forced upon her, and now, although she wouldn’t admit it, it was Sokka, Aang, and Katara who kept her alive now. 

And maybe Sokka and Suki understood, but they didn’t have to because they were together. 

The understanding that filled the atmosphere let Zuko continue. “I know she hasn’t always made the right decisions and I know I haven’t. We both put faith in a nation that was wrong and we didn’t realize it until we had both done things we can’t take back.” He remembered a day when he had been at Mai’s house and news had broken about plans to suppress rebellions in Ba Sing Se. How Mai had sucked in her cheeks and avoided eye contact as they listened to her father discuss plans to send earthbenders to prison ships and teenagers to the front lines of the fire nation army. She didn’t say anything, but there was a mutual understanding that they had both contributed to the suffering of innocent people. 

“But I know she’s not like them. She’s dangerous because she’s strong and she doesn’t let anyone control her. My sister is not going to let her get away with letting us go. She knew she was taking a risk for us.” He confirmed. 

Sokka had been shocked when Zuko had told him about Mai being his girlfriend a few days earlier because, well, mainly because it was  _ Zuko  _ and a huge part of him could only see him as the fire nation prince who had chased them around the world. He couldn’t imagine Zuko having something as normal as a girlfriend and Mai, she seemed more machine than girl to Sokka when they fought. She was unfeeling and precise. Zuko had always been angry and chaotic up until recently. They seemed to be on opposite spectrums of dangerous, but what puzzled Sokka the most was how Zuko let his guard down and had what seemed like a genuine moment of happiness when he spoke of her. This girl who had rigidly declined her toddler brother’s safety at Azula’s request and had seemingly functioned as a walking weapon was described by Zuko as the  _ only person he missed.  _

“I’m glad she did,” Sokka responded. “I hope she’s okay.” 

“She will be,” said Zuko, now laying on his back and looking at the peeling paint on the ceiling, the smoke and ambers fizzling out above. “If she could spend sixteen years with Azula as her friend, any fire nation prison will pale in comparison.” 

He kept his eyes open long enough for the heat of the fire to water them. 

_ “Are you going to come watch?”  _

_ “No, I don’t think I want to.”  _

_ “Everyone’s going to be there.”  _

_ “That doesn’t mean I have to be there.” _

_ “I want you to come.”  _

_ “Zuko… I don’t have a good feeling about you doing this.”  _

_ “He’s old, I think I can take him.”  _

_ “The fact that he’s old just means that he’s had more experience practicing firebending, even you’re not that dumb.”  _

_ “Forget it! You don’t have to come. I knew you wouldn’t care. You never care about anything.”  _

_ “Zuko.”  _

_ “....”  _

_ “Azula said I should come. She was too enthusiastic about you going through with it.”  _

_ “....”  _

_ “I just don’t have a good feeling about you doing this, isn’t there any way you can back out?”  _

_ “I’m not going to back out Mai, I need to defend my honor.”  _

_ “Just … promise me you won’t do anything stupid.”  _

He hadn’t realized his stupidity until it was far, far too late. And Mai was oceans and years away. 

Mai had understood survival in a way only people caught in the fire nation’s plans and history could. She understood what it was to look a choice in the eye and make the wrong one without blinking and Zuko, who had struggled with those choices, saw her as a liferaft. She was warmth when his uncle had turned cold to him. She saw how he felt out of place in the capital because she too was discontent, albeit for perhaps more selfish reasons. They both wanted something more than the fire nation and when Mai had kicked that sword out of the ropes, they might have both found it. 

**Author's Note:**

> ayyy first AtLA fanfic (aka, what I wrote instead of studying for finals)


End file.
